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Transmission of Nest Site Preferences in Titmice

Animals often modify their behaviour on the basis of their own experience or as a result of the behaviour of others. Such individual and social learning are crucial for adaptability to environmental change. Individual learning could lead to vertical transmission of information from one generation to another. By contrast, social learning facilitates the horizontal spread of information among current members of a group or indeed the whole population.

In recent years, evidence for the important role of individual and social learning in animal decision making has been mounting. Nest site selection is one of the key decisions during the lifetime of an individual. In birds, nest choice may have important fitness consequences because the nest may protect the eggs and nestlings from predators, shelter offspring and parents from the elements and provide a favourable microclimate. This could lead to the evolution of nest site preferences. Such preferences are commonly assumed to be mainly genetically determined with a restricted role for learning. However, if a bird has been successfully reared in a particular nest, natural selection may favour any mechanism that leads to a preference for that natal nest type. One such mechanism is imprinting, which will transmit information about nest sites vertically. Another possibility is learning through the observation of nest choices made by conspecifics. This will transmit information horizontally. However, although some recent experimental studies show evidence of such social learning in bird nest choice, others do not. A decisive method to test for horizontal transmission is to manipulate the role models for learning.

In this issue, Tore Slagsvold, Kari Wigdahl Kleiven, Ane Eriksen and Lars Erik Johannessen (University of Oslo) present a study in which they manipulated the role models for learning by cross-fostering blue tits and great tits, two species with different nest preferences (Fig. 1). Great tits tend to prefer larger nests than blue tits but both species occupy nests of different sizes. The study was carried out in a woodland area near Oslo, containing approximately 500 regularly distributed nestboxes of two types: large and small. Cross-fostering, which was defined as rearing by the other species, was done during the incubation period and all host eggs were removed. The numbers of individual blue tits involved in the cross-fostered and control groups were 181 and 256, respectively. For the great tits the respective numbers were 194 and 275.

Figure 1. A male great tit paired to a female blue tit, adopting a small nestbox. The male had been reared by blue tits, whereas the female had been reared by great tits (both had been cross-fostered). Photo: Tore Slagsvold.

Click here to view the full editorial by Michelle Scott (Executive Editor).